Terry Gilliam is as widely known for his production troubles as he is for the quality of his films. Gilliam has had to contend with studio interference on nearly all his recent films, and has weathered such troubles as litigation over screenplay credit on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a literal pain-in-the-ass star who shut down production on The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and the death of leading man Heath Ledger while shooting his latest project, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. It’s gotten to the point where it’s a shock when a Gilliam project runs smoothly.
After finally abandoning Don Quixote, Gilliam needed a new project, and around the same time, Bob and Harvey Weinstein of Miramax were looking for a fantasy franchise to cash in on the recent success of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Of course, the eternal troublemaker Gilliam and the famously meddling Weinsteins were hardly an ideal match, but I’d guess that Gilliam was so frustrated with not making films that he took The Brothers Grimm so that he could keep working.
However, from the beginning there were problems. Both Gilliam and leading man Matt Damon wanted Oscar nominee Samantha Morton for the film’s female lead, but the Weinsteins vetoed her, allegedly because she wasn’t deemed attractive enough. Let me repeat that: she wasn’t good-looking enough for these guys. Another point of contention was a prosthetic nose that Gilliam wanted Damon to wear in the film, but which was nixed by the studio. And the troubles continued throughout production (regular Gilliam cinematographer Nicola Pecorini was fired mid-filming) and even post-production (the film’s most expensive effects sequence was cut from the film after the effects were nearly finished). Gilliam and the studio differed so greatly over the film’s final cut — surprising, I realize — that Gilliam placed the editing on hold for six months and shot his subsequent film, Tideland, in the interim. 
But though The Brothers Grimm clearly suffered from studio meddling, Gilliam is hardly blameless. The screenplay is mediocre at best, cribbing the main storyline of The Frighteners — a charlatan exploiting people’s superstitions for personal gain suddenly comes up against a genuine supernatural threat. Into this formula, Gilliam, screenwriting collaborator Tony Grisoni, and Miramax house scribe Ehren Kruger shoehorn as many references to Grimm fairy tales as they can, most of which practically club you over the head with their obviousness.
Perhaps sensing how thin the material was, Gilliam tries to compensate with his direction, which is brimful with such familiar Gilliam tropes as swooping camera shots, wide-angle lenses, and all manner of extreme tilts. Likewise, he directs his supporting players to go wayyyyyyyyy over the top instead of giving them three-dimensional characters. Most embarrassing is Peter Stormare as the bumbling Cavaldi, giving less a performance than a failed parody of commedia dell’arte-style acting. At one point, Cavaldi says of the German tongue, “every word is like an execution,” but the line would more aptly be applied to his performance.
Amidst the chaos, there are elements of The Brothers Grimm that work. Chiefly among them is the performance by Heath Ledger as the nebbishy Jakob Grimm, who actually believes in the stories that he and his brother are exploiting. Ledger makes the most of what he’s given to create a funny, surprisingly touching character who gives the film what little heart it contains. In 2005, Ledger was beginning to really demonstrate his range, and based on the
evidence here we might have expected some richly comic performances in his future. Damon is solid as well in a more conventional role, but it’s Ledger who steals the show.
There are also a handful of magical moments in which Gilliam transcends the screenplay and lets his imagination run wild. Most effective is a scene in which a puddle of mud takes a human form to abduct a child, and it’s such a creepy image that not even a line pointing out that the mud-man is meant to be the Gingerbread Man can ruin it. I also like a macabre moment in which a girl is swallowed whole by a possessed horse, which Gilliam shows almost completely in shadow. And there’s a priceless bit involving a kitten, one of the few times in the film when Gilliam’s twisted sense of humor shines through.
After sticking it on the shelf for months, the Weinsteins released The Brothers Grimm in late summer 2005, as one of roughly a dozen films they dumped in theatres just prior to relinquishing Miramax to Disney. Leading up to the film’s release, the Weinsteins allegedly placed a gag order on Gilliam forbidding him to say anything against the film for fear that he’d try to sabotage its box-office chances. But Gilliam had mostly moved on, as Tideland would make its world premiere less than a month later. Tideland received many negative reviews, but love it or hate it, it’s unmistakably a Gilliam film, which is more than I can say about The Brothers Grimm.